Technically concerning, HDRi is easier to achieve mix of direct lights and soft boxes, since single image will have that based on size and intensity of spots.
It's less flexible to modify (as you can really just rotate the whole mixture, but not individual sources, as they are baked in) and if you would wish so, you need something like HDR studio.
But you can always just use pre-made HDRi and since there's plenty, all you have to do is swap them until you get what you like.
I would also say it samples faster, since it will be single environment light source as opposed to mixture of uniform and directional lights, which need to be sampled each, and currently for example, directional area lights are very noisy in Corona.
Aesthetically, doesn't matter at all, it's just the approach that changes, results are identical.
